Chocolate

We live somewhat like dust specks, Or like pollen. My mother doesn’t know who my father is, she says I merely came on the wind. Except that’s where we’ve stayed. At night I wonder why other children get to play with kites, while I must be one. We sell chocolate. My mother does. But I’ve eaten so much of it; I’ve lost taste for it. Me, I’d be selling lemon drops or spicy hams, something that really wakes you up. Something that stirs you. I’m too young to know where I came from, but I’m old enough to wish my ships to harbor. I’ll get married some day and when I do, I swear I’ll nail myself down, just stay one place awhile. Away from the breeze. My mother never did that for me. I don’t want to someday have a daughter who says, “Who is daddy?”, or worse wonders “Where is home?” I don’t get to keep words like home, or even words like keep. It’s as if I’m constantly in a tornado— possessions, memories flying into the spinning hoops of black. Maman, I’d like to ask why can’t we stay? Why can’t we have some other kind of shop, a glass shop maybe, so it’s too cumbersome to pack up. Would a mirror shop be better? When you run as often as we do, you don’t see many mirrors until one day you look up from brushing your teeth and think “Who is this stranger?” In some other kind of shop in some other kind of place I could be happy. Not here, because here barely exists. Things fly into that stupid wind, and I don’t have enough arms to grab them all. Where is my father? Why do I exist? I’d like to ask Maman. I must be a mistake, if no one remembers me, if I must change my name every time you change your mind? If I’m fatherless, homeless, smaller than a speck of pollen on the wind? What am I even here for? And please, please don’t you dare say for chocolate.